


your colours will return

by orphan_account



Category: True Detective
Genre: M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-24 16:06:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2587556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is (and will hopefully continue to be) a look at Rust and Marty immediately after the series ends, at their relationship and their recovery. </p><p>Officially on hiatus while I deal with my growing feelings about Dragon Age.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i drew a line

_“When I turn towards you_  
 _in bed, I have a feeling_  
 _of stepping into a church_  
 _that was burned down long ago_  
 _and where only the darkness in the eyes of the icons_  
 _has remained_  
 _filled with the flames_  
 _which annihilated them.”_

— **Henrik Nordbrandt,**  
 ** _Our Love is Like Byzantium_**

 

* * *

 

 

He wakes up cold some time in the night a few hours after Marty has brought him home, confused and afraid, with the yellow taste of Carcosa heavy in his mouth like poison. For several long seconds he doesn't know where he is and nervous fear sets his heart to fluttering too fast against his ribcage, a prisoner throwing itself against the bars of its cell. Panic clamours in the pit of his stomach, in his chest, in his head, and his mind is full of fuzz like cotton wool so he barely has the presence of mind to draw in a deep breath, to hold it, to calm down.

 

Memory comes back to him in quickfire fragments like lightning strikes, so when Marty appears in silhouette against the honey-gold light spilling in from the hallway and says, “You alright, man? Heard you shout,” Rust is already on the brink of sleeping again. He mutters something about bad dreams, something like an apology, before slipping back under the surface into the warm healing dark.

 

In the morning he wakes feeling clearer than he has in weeks. The wound in his belly is a dull and constant ache like a broken bone, and when he absently presses his fingers against the dressing, shivering barbs of sharper pain go needling through him until his eyes water and his mouth fills with saliva like he needs to puke. It's a good pain, keeps him grounded, whispers _you're getting better_ in a language only his nervous system understands. For a long, precious moment he lies still and silent in the sticky warm sunlight spilling through the blinds, letting it warm his skin and his sluggish blood. It's been a long time, longer than he can remember, since he woke up after sunrise feeling well-rested, feeling _good_.

 

The clock on the bedside table reads 0630. He dozes, and the next time he looks the sun is higher and brighter, and three hours have passed. His mouth is dry and he needs to piss with growing urgency, so he rises from the bed like a corpse from the dead and slips at last out of his hospital gown into something more comfortable. Marty has always been bigger than him, so the wifebeater he changes into hangs shapeless off his shoulders and the flannel pants sit too low on his hips.

 

Getting dressed takes longer than he expects, and the exertion leaves him sat dog-tired on the edge of the bed, gripping the sheets hard while little pinpoints of light swim and burst in front of his eyes. It takes ten minutes to dress and another fifteen before he trusts himself to stand and walk gingerly out into the bathroom, where he splashes his face with cold water after taking a piss that seems to go on forever, and studies his reflection in the mirror. He looks the same as ever, lean and tired and hungry, but the shadows under his eyes are deeper now and dark as bruises, and he's paler than he ever remembers being, like a ghost or a shadow. He doesn't spend long fretting over it. Whatever he is, eyeballing his reflection all day isn't going to change anything.

 

He splashes his face again and dries off (he has to bend for the towel and pain drills into his guts when he does) and shuffles grimacing into the living room, where he finds Marty sat sleeping on the couch. He has the remote control in his lap and one hand curled around an empty bottle of Lone Star, and Rust watches him pensively for a moment, then settles down slow on the couch beside him. He tries to be gentle but Marty startles awake anyway with a sound halfway between a gasp and a groan, and spends the next several minutes looking guilty, like a kid caught out by his parents after watching cartoons all night.

 

“You wearin' my clothes?” he asks at length, looking bemused, voice thick with sleep. Rust shrugs.

 

“Figured you didn't want my bare ass on your upholstery,” he replies, and Marty makes a noise in the back of his throat to concede the point.

 

Rust reaches down for the packet of cigarettes on the end table while Marty alternates between trying to figure out what's on the television and fidgeting with all the shit he's fallen asleep with, clearing his lap so he can lean forwards and rub his eyes and say, “I'll swing by your place later, get you some clothes that actually fit.”

 

“You can take me home, Marty,” Rust replies around the cigarette clenched waiting between his teeth, “I can look after myself.”

 

“Nah, I know—but you don't have to. You can stay. I... I want you to stay.”

 

Rust considers this for a moment, lighter raised but not open. He can feel Marty watching him, gauging him, waiting for a response... but he takes his time, wondering how long it's been since someone really cared about him, weighing up whether he feels good about this or just uncomfortable.

 

He flicks open the lighter and draws a warm breath of smoke up into his lungs, and the sound of the Zippo snapping shut again is very loud against the inane sound of the television.

 

“Alright,” he says in a cloud of exhaled smoke, and that settles the matter.

 

*

 

They take the I-10 south for thirty unchanging miles out of Baton Rouge towards Gonzales. Rust watches the trees spill past in a blur of fever-bright green, and the taste of them at the back of his throat is all ozone and scorched earth.

 

“Everything multiplies too fast out here,” he mutters, half to himself. “You stay still too long it'll swallow you.” He catches the colourless reflection of the sky in the flat, stagnant stretch of water running alongside the blacktop and at the sight of it he feels smothered, like he's drowning, even after the water has fallen behind them and it's just the wild green overgrowth again.

 

Half a mile later, he feels the weight of Marty's hand on his knee, warm and reassuring, and it brings him back from his suffocating thoughts,

 

“You alright, man?” he asks, stealing a quick sidelong glance at Rust. “You look kinda green, want me to pull over?”

 

Rust offers the barest shake of his head in response. “I'm fine.” He doesn't need to look at Marty to know he doesn't believe him.

 

“Suit yourself,” he replies at length. “Just don't puke in the car.”

 

Marty leaves his hand where it is, absent-mindedly rubbing slow, soothing circles against the outside of Rust's leg with his thumb, right up until they hit their exit, when he has to shift gears and slow down. He doesn't put it back, and Rust can't quite decide how to articulate that he wishes he would, so he just turns and stares back at his own eyes reflected in the window until they pull up outside the roadhouse. A sign hangs from the door, _closed until further notice_ , and Rust finds himself wondering about Doumain for the first time since Carcosa, where he's gone, when he'll back... _if_ he'll be back. The bar means a lot to him, Rust knows that as well as anyone, but there are bad memories in this place and plenty of them.

 

When he gets out of the car the gravel bites into the bare soles of his feet and it seems like a long way to his front door. It's barely past noon and the heat is overbearing, pressing in wet and stifling all sides, and Rust lets it wash over him, fill his lungs with the rotten black stink of swamp, of things growing too fast and dying and growing again. By the time he opens his eyes and comes back to himself Marty is already at the door. It's unlocked but Rust isn't sure he has the energy to say as much, so he just walks carefully through the shimmering heat of the parking lot instead, and lets Marty put an arm around his waist to support his weight on the steps leading on to the porch.

 

“You ever hear of a lock?” Marty asks with an incredulous shake of his head as Rust opens the door wordlessly.

 

“Wasn't planning on coming back,” he replies as he crosses the threshold into the familiar confines of his apartment, the air hot and still and stale with smoke. He means for the words to come out cold and casual, but they catch in his throat and he fumbles over them, and it sounds more like a confession than an irrefutable statement of fact. He feels Marty's discomfiture like a physical thing behind him.

 

“Ah, Rust...” he mutters, and Rust turns around to look at him stood there in the doorway like he doesn't know what to do with himself.

 

"I drew a line, okay?” he says, unapologetic. “Underneath Dora Lange and Marie Fontenot and all those boys and girls buried along the bayou in unmarked graves. I drew that line a long time ago, and for a long time I couldn't see anything past it. It was like standing on the edge of something looking down—at nothing, darkness implacable. Now I came to terms with that, with that darkness, but... you _know_ , man, you know it wasn't as empty as it looked.” He pauses, looking down at his hands, and wishes he'd bought his cigarettes, wishes he'd stayed slumped on Marty's couch, wishes he'd bled out in the dirt in Carcosa... but he didn't. He didn't and nothing is ever easy, so he draws in breath and sighs it out and goes on, “I already told you I'm not supposed to be here... but I am. I am, and as long as I've got you in this, whatever this is, this weird _Beyond_ , I'm not..." he trails off, reaching for the words, struggling through the fog of too many thoughts. "You don't have to worry. Alright?"

 

Marty mulls it over for a moment, then nods like he's satisfied—and maybe he is, maybe he isn't—and makes a dismissive gesture.

 

“Go get your shit. I'll wait here.”

 

*

 

He sleeps the whole way back, shallow, unwholesome sleep that has him jerking awake every few minutes and feeling inexplicably exhausted by the time they're back in Marty's apartment. There's a ball of pain in the pit of his stomach like hot lead and he's on the verge of passing out by the time he sinks down gratefully on to the couch. He can hear Marty talking, but the words are lost on him, and all he gets is the inflection, as if heard from underwater.

 

He drifts out and sleeps, and the next time he wakes he's in bed, with Marty curled up like a child beside him, breathing slow and deep and easy.

 

Those first few nights are good, and later, when the nights are not so kind to them, when they come awake screaming if they sleep at all and sit drunk in the dim white fluorescence of the television screen until the sun comes up, Rust remembers those nights when sleep came easy with a distant sense of gratitude.


	2. good and warm and safe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is 4:30am and I can't stop muttering weird shit under my breath to see if it sounds suitably Rust-y. Increasingly I find myself staying up until sunrise to write this shit. I don't sleep, I just write fanfic. 
> 
> Anyway, here is some kissy-squishy filler for you while I'm over here wrestling the twin demons of dialogue and plot. I promised myself I wasn't going to tumble headlong into makeoutsville but this turned out nice, so... no regrets! 
> 
> /cartwheels wildly into the sun

Marty kisses him in the haunted twilight hours before dawn, and they fit together easy, like pieces of a puzzle. He tastes like whiskey and his mouth is cold with it, so when he pulls away a little Rust pulls him back by his collar, breathes “ _come here_ ” against his lips, and kisses him again until the cold is gone and all he can taste is Marty, shadowy ink-dark indigo like a sky full of stars.

 

They come apart flushed and breathless, the air between them electric with unspoken words. The silence feels sacred; they breathe together not in unison but like supplicants reciting a litany, and Marty runs his hands slow up the length of Rust's spine like he's counting off devotions on his vertebrae.

 

After three nights spent sleepless time loses its normal sway and significance. They melt into a languid embrace and stand there together, foreheads touching, eyes half-closed, until the first watery rays of sunlight reach out for them like thin grasping fingers across the tiles, easing them up out of dreamlike suspension and back into exhausted reality, until they're just weak and wounded and leaning into one another because they'll fall if they don't, and whatever transient magic passed fleeting between them is gone like the warm lingering memory of a good dream.

 

Rust clears his throat and says, quiet, “I need to sit down, Marty.”

 

They take a long time getting to the couch and Rust has to stop halfway, close his eyes and count his breaths and lean hard on Marty until his head stops swimming. By the time they sit down he can hear buzzing in his ears like insects and his hands are shaking so badly that he can barely fumble the cap off the little yellow bottle of painkillers Marty hands him. He can _see_ the pain in his stomach, glowing red like dying embers at the edges of his field of vision.

 

The taste of Marty is still marble-heavy on his tongue. He washes it down with a Vicodin and a shot of Jameson's but his mouth goes on burning with the phantom press of Marty's lips. He is, he thinks, glad for it, for the comfort, for something to focus on other than how much he hurts.

 

After a while, a second or a minute or maybe an hour, Marty shifts his weight and struggles with the words he's been wrestling with. “Listen, Rust... I didn't—back there, I mean, I didn't... I didn't mean—”

  
“Yeah you fuckin' did,” Rust interrupts, opening his eyes just a little to glance sidelong at Marty, who goes on staring at his feet for a moment before he smiles nervously to himself and laughs, nodding slow and incredulous and maybe a little afraid.

 

“You know, I guess I did.”

 

Satisfied, Rust lets his eyes close again, but not before he catches Marty's hand in his own and squeezes tight and murmurs, “Nobody's business but our own.”

 

Next time he opens his eyes the pain is duller, fading, and Marty is asleep next to him, and their fingers are still linked in his lap and that feels good in a muffled way, like _good_ and _warm_ and _safe_ are frail things wrapped in cotton wool and bubblewrap to keep them from shattering. Rust thinks about kissing him but he's heavy with medication and moving hurts, and sleep doesn't come easy for Marty any more, not even broken fragments of it like this... so he sits unmoving instead and watches the daylight dance blood-dark behind his eyelids until he sleeps, too.


	3. snap, spark, click

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sweats nervously* I am bad at dialogue at the best of times, please be gentle with me...

One of the things Rust truly excels at is being frustrating. Marty forgets that sometimes, forgets it in those quiet moments when he catches himself staring at Rust or touching him or just thinking about him, forgets it until the day he asks when he intends to go back to get his staples taken out.

 

Rust sucks in the last of his cigarette, ashes it in the ashtray he's carved out of a beer can, says flat and firm, “I ain't goin' back, Marty. Would've thought you'd figured that out already.”

 

Marty is silent for a long time, staring at a fixed point just above and behind the television screen, trying his damnedest not to rise to the irritation coiling up like a restive serpent in his belly. “What, then? You gonna hook 'em out with a fork, or just wait until the staple fairy get back from her vacation with the tooth fairy? You know, I hear she leaves a whole _quarter_ for surgical staples. That's nearly ten dollars, man.”

 

Rust lights another cigarette ( _snap, spark, click)_ and the smell of smoke and lighter fluid is the only response Marty gets, so he presses on, “Hell, you just gonna leave it be? You a fan of the, uh, the Frankenstein aesthetic, now?”

 

“You done?” Rust asks slow through a lingering blue cloud of smoke, and Marty just shakes his head, gets up off the couch and gets his keys from the kitchen counter.

 

“Yeah, you could say that,” he replies under his breath, and leaves, closing the door behind him too firmly. The slam of it echoes in the still, dead air of the late afternoon and he feels immediately a little foolish—and that pisses him off, makes him slam his car door, too, makes him back out too fast and tear up the carefully planted flowerbed bordering the parking lot.

 

*

 

It's an hour and a half to Dauterive Hospital. He makes it in forty-five minutes, with the window down the whole way and the rush of wind and engine and blood in his ears so he feels soothed by the time he pulls up outside, deflated, less like he wants to kill something with his hands and more like he should have paid closer attention to the speed cameras along the interstate. 

 

By some small miracle he finds Maggie in the foyer. She has her back to him, but he knows her immediately by the way she makes him feel just by virtue of existing, like someone has all his insides in a vice and they mean to squeeze the life out of him. When she turns and spots him approaching like a man facing the firing squad her eyebrows rise and she meets him halfway, cuts off his greeting with a low hiss, “What are you doing here?” instead of  _hello_ . It feels like she's embarrassed, like she's ready for a fight, like it hasn't been fifteen years since he last bothered her at work. 

 

“Shit, Maggie, it's good to see you, too,” he says, trying hard not to sound too wounded, failing. Maggie sighs something like an apology, but goes on standing there with one hand on her hip and an expression on her face somewhere between exasperation and impatience. 

 

“I'm _working_ , Marty,” she says, and he holds up his hands in an unspoken apology of his own.

 

“I know. I know, but I need your help with something.” She looks like she doesn't know whether to laugh or slap him, so he takes advantage of her moment of indecision and adds, “It's Rust,” which is almost cruel, because he knows leaving that statement hanging there ambiguous will tempt her in where everything else might fail. There's a moment where she lets her guard down enough for him to see the concern there, but she builds her walls back up in a heartbeat and doesn't stammer like he expects her to when she replies. She doesn't sound sad, or soft; she sounds ruthless.

 

“What _about_ Rust? Make it quick.” 

 

“He, uh... he won't go back to the hospital. You know, for his staples.”

 

She stares at him, incredulous, tilts her head back just a little in that way she has when she's waiting for the conversation to carry on, waiting for Marty to explain what any of this has to do with her. In the white glare of the fluorescents she's luminous, like all the light in the world radiates not from the sun but from her. Like this, she puts Marty in mind of those old paintings with dim, featureless backgrounds and the subjects lit up as if by fox-fire. He could look at her forever. 

 

He clears his throat before he continues, aware that the silence between them has gone on too long. “Uh, I was hoping you might... have some ideas.” Under her gaze he feels extremely small and foolish, and very aware of how _hot_ it is in here.

 

“If he doesn't want to go back, you can't force him. I don't know what else to tell you. He'll _have_ to go eventually—his skin will try to close over the staples and the itching will get too bad for him to ignore.”

 

“I'd rather not wait for it to get that bad. I mean, let's just say, hypothetically, if he were to do it himself, how would he... uh, go about that?”

 

Maggie sighs, and the light in her eyes is fire like she wants to argue—but she doesn't, because she knows as well as Marty does that there isn't any point, that Rust will just end up doing it with a pair of wire-cutters if he has to, now that he has a mind for it.

 

“Wait here,” she says shortly, and turns away, down the hall and out of sight. He feels cooler for her absence, and the flush that has risen to his cheeks has faded a little by the time she comes back with something in her hand. She holds it up to eye level as she approaches, and he reads _Skin Staple Remover_ before she lowers it surreptitiously for him to take.

 

“Thanks, Maggie. Really. I appreciate—”

 

“He's not going to be able to do it himself. You'll have to do this for him,” she interjects, her voice hushed so he has to lean in closer to hear her, close enough that he can smell her perfume. It's different to what he remembers—probably more expensive, more _mature_ than the sweet, floral scents he used to buy for her. “You need to go to a Walgreens or something and get yourself some alcohol swabs, and some gloves—and make sure you wash your hands. _Thoroughly_. With soap.” She talks to him like she's talking to a child, like she's trying to impress upon him the importance of eating his greens and brushing his teeth and not sitting too close to the TV screen.

 

“Alright. I got it.”

 

“You start out doing every other staple, then work your way back up,” she presses, “and if that incision starts to open up, you stop. I don't care what he says, you _stop_. Okay?”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

 

“And you sterilize the whole wound, before and after—”

 

“Maggie, _I got this._ I used to be a cop, you remember that? You don't forget basic first aid.”

 

“Well this isn't basic first aid, Marty. He should be in a hospital for this. If he gets an infection...” she trails off, with her eyes big and somehow threatening and her lips drawn into a thin pink line. “You need to go, now, before I change my mind.”

 

He nods in reply, says, “Thanks again, Maggie,” and reaches out to touch her forearm—carefully, lightly, as though she might shatter under his touch. She gives him a clipped smile that deepens, briefly, to something softer and sincere, before she walks away and leaves him stood staring after her, vaguely awed by how much he still cares about her.

 

*

 

It's almost dark when he gets back and the smell on the breeze is a heady mix of night-blossoming flowers and heavy industry. Crickets sing in the gathering twilight and moths plunge suicidally at the high white streetlights, and the moon is red and swollen when it rises behind the refinery chugging cancer into the atmosphere. Nights like these feel haunted. A shiver goes through him and all the hairs along his forearms stand on end, and he hurries inside with a feeling like there are hundreds of eyes out there in the dark _watching._

 

His apartment is cool and quiet, with the shades drawn against the dark and all the lights on, and the television playing some mindless talk show to the empty living room. He wonders idly where Rust is, but takes the time to study the staple remover a little more closely while he's alone. The wrapping seems innocuous enough but the thing inside looks like some medieval instrument of torture, like something for prying up fingernails, and he ends up stuffing it into the Walgreens bag with the Neosporin and rubbing alcohol he bought, shoves the whole lot into a drawer to be forgotten and turns his attention to figuring out where Rust is.

 

He's on the verge of calling his name when he hears the awful sound of retching from the bathroom, followed by the unmistakable splash of somebody losing their lunch.

 

He finds Rust on his knees with his face in the toilet, and even from the doorway Marty can see how much puking hurts him; his knuckles are white where his fists are clenched so tight and he makes the occasional noise in the back of his throat like an animal caught in a trap.

 

“You try with the soup again?” he asks, crossing the room to sit on the edge of the bathtub and lightly brush a few errant strands of hair back out of Rust's face with his fingertips.

 

“Ah, the fucking _soup_ ,” Rust agrees, and his voice is raw and wet, and he pukes a thin stream of colourless liquid into the toilet bowl a second later. 

 

“You know that shit doesn't stay down.”

 

Rust spits and leans back, settling down to sit cross-legged on the tiles with the stink of badly-digested chicken soup hanging heavy around him like smoke, like a raincloud. “Thank you, Marty, for that insight. Really.”

 

“Sorry,” he says, squeezing Rust's shoulder gently, a gesture halfway between comfort and apology. “You want a glass of water?”

 

Rust nods, groans, says though gritted teeth, “Vicodin would be nice.” He makes a noise that's supposed to be a laugh, but it just sounds like misery and suffering, and he clutches greedily at the pills Marty brings a moment later, washes them down with lukewarm water and then just sits shaking with his head in his hands.

 

Marty leans forward and rubs Rust's back until he stills and curses under his breath. “Help me up, man,” he manages at last, and Marty is happy to oblige; seeing him sat there looking so small and hurt fills him with bleak unease.

 

They walk slow, and Rust is all coiled muscles like a cat ready to pounce, like he might keep the pain at bay if he just stays tense enough. When they get to the couch he drops, slides out of Marty's arms and sits slumped against the cushions, pale and sweaty, eyes closed, one hand on his stomach like he's trying to hold himself together.

 

Marty sits beside him for a very long minute, then gets up and fills two glasses with ice and perhaps more Jameson's than is strictly wise. Rust takes his without a word, barely opening his eyes, and by the time he's finished drinking some of the colour has returned to his face.

 

“Where've you been, man?”

 

“Why, you miss me?”

 

Rust lets a tired breath of laughter out through his nose. “Oh yeah. Been pining after you all day.”

 

“Poor baby. Nah, I, uh, actually went to see Maggie, see what she had to say about getting those staples out.”

 

“Huh. She still out Iberia way?”

 

“Yeah. Why?”

 

“Long drive, Marty. Could've just called her.” Marty sets his empty glass down and studies Rust for a moment, watches the slow rise and fall of his chest, the way all the tension slowly melts out of him with every breath now that his blood is a cocktail of whiskey and painkillers. He doesn't reply, and when the silence has gone on for a very long time Rust gives a sort of one-shoulder shrug. “How is she? What did she say?”

 

“Ah, you know how it is, man. She's... fucking _radiant_.” He stays quiet for a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek and shaking his head a little, barely aware he's doing it. “She, uh—she didn't appreciate me bothering her at work. Told me as much. Said you... you're a grown man and capable of making your own decisions, said I should just wait until the itching gets so bad you're begging to go back...” he trails off, hoping that's sufficient, thinking about the staple remover in the drawer, wondering how long it's going to take for him to work up the guts to actually use the thing.

 

Rust cracks one eye open, sensing that Marty is omitting something, _lying_... but he doesn't press the issue, just leans into Marty and says, “Glad you came back when you did.”


End file.
